Tajikistan

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran, Pakistan and Turkey welcomed leaders of the six former Soviet republics of Central Asia at a regional economic summit meeting in Tehran yesterday. At the opening of the two-day gathering, the presidents of Iran and Turkey presented contrasting but equally ambitious guidelines for economic development and trade cooperation.Three of the former Soviet republics -- Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan -- were formally recognized yesterday as full members of the long-dormant Economic Cooperation Organization, which was founded in 1963 by Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.

The average resident of Sandtown-Winchester can expect to live as long as a resident of Tajikistan, a former Soviet country still struggling to recover from a civil war.  But in tony Homeland, residents on average live as long as the Swiss, who have access to one of the world's best health care systems. A map created by students at The Park School depicts health disparities among the city's neighborhoods through countries in which residents have similar life expectancies.  For example, residents of the Seton Hill and Downtown neighborhoods have one of the shortest life expectancies, living, on average, just under 64 years.  The inhabitants of the totalitarian dictatorship in North Korea have similar life expectancies.  In contrast, those in the Roland Park area can expect to live on average more than 83 years, much like the denizens of The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, a tiny nation surrounded by Italy.

MOSCOW - The Kremlin is talking of joining the West in a global war on terrorism, and there is strong public sympathy here for the United States after last week's attacks. But if the U.S. government decides to launch an assault on Afghanistan, many Russians say, don't expect Russia to offer military support. Efforts to broker a military alliance between Moscow and Washington seem doomed, because of a clash of interests in oil-rich Central Asia, Iran and Iraq. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to arrive in Moscow today for talks with Russian officials.

MOSCOW - Russia, which began the week with an inflammatory threat against Afghanistan and its Islamic leadership, was already organizing a retreat from its verbal offensive as the workweek drew to a close yesterday. "It's hard for me to analyze the reasons for this stupidity," Andrei Piontkovsky, an independent political analyst, said yesterday. On Monday, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a senior presidential adviser, sent shock waves throughout the region when he suggested that Russia was prepared to attack Afghanistan if that country helped the Chechen rebels fighting in Russia.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan. -- The mindless pop music thumps away at the "Istanbul" cellar restaurant here; the prostitutes conscientiously ply their trade at the hard-currency hotel; the markets groan with melons, carrots, spices and pistachios -- all in all, it doesn't really look like a police state.But the government is cracking down on its scattered opposition here with a vengeance.Jailings, beatings and rigged trials are giving Uzbekistan -- the largest and most important of the new countries of Central Asia -- the worst human rights record of any former Soviet republic not now engulfed in a shooting war.Uzbekistan's internal crackdown has sharply intensified this month, driving even the moderate opposition nearly to desperation.

UNITED NATIONS - Hunger now afflicts 830 million people around the world because of natural disaster, armed conflict and a grinding poverty that consigns the poor to chronic malnutrition, the U.N. World Food Program reported yesterday. "From generation to generation, people don't have enough food to eat," Catherine Bertini, the executive director of the food agency, said at a briefing, where she distributed a map identifying "hot spots" where hunger is most severe. The map shows large swaths of sub-Sahara Africa and Asia where millions of people, most of them women and children, cannot get enough to eat. "The combination of poverty and disaster causes people to have even less possibility to build resources to end their hunger," Bertini said.

They speak Persian dialects and Turkic tongues, their ancestors developed algebra and conquered vast empires, and they live in land once traversed by the fabled Silk Road. And most Americans know very little about them. "I would venture to guess the average American may not have noticed the name Uzbekistan until three weeks ago," says John Schoeberlein, director of Harvard's Forum for Central Asian Studies. Now, some U.S. soldiers are stationed there, and the four other countries that make up the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are growing in importance because they, too, are neighbors of Afghanistan.

Three days from the presidency, Bill Clinton confronts a worl already more perilous than the one that brought him victory less than 11 weeks ago. Old enemies are up to new tricks in the Middle East; the passing of the Cold War has raised a flurry of regional conflicts around the world. Meanwhile the economy continues to confound with conflicting signs of recovery and slide, and the deficit continues to grow. Mr. Clinton faces myriad challenges. But here are 10 widely viewed as the toughest, what he said about them during the campaign and the outlook for solution:1.

The rain of rockets and artillery on Kabul makes the Afghan capital another Sarajevo. Hundreds are dead. Thousands are wounded. The hospitals cannot cope. The victims' crime is to dTC live in Kabul. The perpetrators are the militia Hezb-I-Islami whose leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, believes that interim President Burhanuddin Rabbani is insufficiently Islamic and should step down, preferably in favor of Mr. Hekmatyar. The weapons are American.Perhaps Mr. Rabbani, a comparatively gentle cleric who favors an Islamic Afghanistan, should step down.

GENEVA - Although earthquakes and floods usually receive the most prominent news coverage, infectious diseases are claiming far more lives than natural disasters, according to a report issued yesterday by the Red Cross. The death toll from infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is 160 times greater than the number of people killed in last year's major earthquakes in Turkey, cyclones in India and floods in Venezuela, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.